© Manon Liu Winter
20 minutes of pure piano music—a piano solo—but yet it seems at times as if the instrument had doubled as I seek to apply myself to the piano’s percussive as well as voice-related qualities.
Combining the sounds I produce inside the body of the instrument with those I produce on the keys effectively creates two layers of sound that occasionally mesh. Sounds from within the body meld with notes—individually or in succession—from the keys. It’s a game of parallels, with foregrounds and backgrounds that never stop changing: Dry and fat, hard and soft, notorious and nostalgic, analytical and naive. Over the course of the performance, the prepared piano is carefully “unprepared.” More and more, I use stones to play on the strings directly.
Years of experimentation with different techniques to manipulate the piano strings have taught me to create sounds that can change our perception of time. The present and the past depend on one another; thus, they are equally present at the same time.
The amplified body and vibrating strings of the piano create a shimmering spectrum that wraps around the actual piano notes like a dense blanket of sound. At the same time, I retain my structural flexibility and restrain my compositional approach to allow the intensity and breathtaking dynamics of each situation to unfold.